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We spent a few hours watching the new Government TV station this week. While not a particularly enjoyable experience there were a few good ideas, which hopefully will be developed as the months

roll by.

The station has a very gentle feel, polite even. But visually, it's as dull as a visit to Dockyard on a bland winter's day.

Take the programme Health and Family, brought to us by the Ministry of Health. The subject is healthy eating for kids.

Visually, what we get is close-up shots of government workers and their monotonous monologues telling us everything they know about their job and what we should and shouldn't do. Some are better at it than others. The ones that aren't good at it must cringe every time they see it. Either way, it appears that if you hold a government position, there's a good chance you're going to have to speak to a camera at some point.

The format is annoying because the whole point of television is moving pictures. For the health programme we've just talked about, why didn't they send a cameraperson into a school at lunchtime, to see what the kids are eating? Pick a few out and at the end of the day talk to their parents - make it about real people. Not the authorities in their offices and suits. One exception to this was a short documentary about the island's heritage told through the eyes of a schoolboy.

Turns out it was made four years ago as part of the Smithsonian's Bermuda Connections project. It was still good though.

On the plus side, we caught an interview with saxophonist Shine Hayward that showed how valuable the station could be. The beauty of the interview was simple, just two Bermudians, who clearly know one another, having a kind of This is Your Life chat.

Keeping it local

As a foreign reporter I felt certain that if I were to have conducted the interview I would never have coaxed out half the information this interviewer was able to get.

It's an important point. Usually, but not always, foreign journalists come over here conditioned to make everything as dramatic as possible - it's what happens when there are more than a dozen newspapers on the shelf to choose from.

The point is this: It can take foreign journalists years to 'get' Bermuda and Bermudians. And even when they think they've got it, they're still not Bermudian. Even the one's who get married to Bermudians. They're still inextricably connected to, and identify with, the country they grew up in.

So, Bermudians interviewing Bermudians without trying to extract some salacious juice out of them - that's a good thing. There's something very genuine about it.

The station's biggest failing, or to be kind, the area that it needs to work on most, is its production values. One programme about the discovery and colonization of Bermuda could easily have been made in any of the past four decades.

A dry narrator gives a textbook and distanced account of the story and the thoughts start swirling: 'what else is on?'

The other main annoyance is the set they use for interviews. It's just two cheap chairs in front of a plain blue backdrop with a cheese plant plonked in the middle: Absolutely no resource, financial or creative, used there. Come on government people, you're getting paid silly amounts of money - at least give us something that feels warm and inviting, a place the viewer wants to be.

The commercials are a bit unsettling, too. Too Much Information about what we should and shouldn't be doing, one after another, over and over again. Realistically, who's going to watch this when Oprah's on? They've also got these awful little pieces showing shots of things like boats on the water, cars going across Somerset Bridge and cyclists at Clearwater. What makes it so awful is that the images are accompanied by a pompous orchestral soundtrack: Painfully old fashioned. Where's the pop and sizzle? Where's the life? It's so incredibly stuffy.

That said, it's quite clear that, as usual, we were whipped up into a panic about the station when we needn't have been.

All that talk about it being the plaything of a megalomaniac dictator? Ridiculous!

No. This station's biggest crime is that it needs to be less about what officials are doing and what they think about things, and more about the people. Make it more human.

The bottom line is, people will take this station for what it is and with all the other media out there, they'll know if they're being fed a one-sided story. Truthfully, it's all a bit superfluous, but with each taxpayer paying about $25 a year for it, it's not worth getting into a state over.[[In-content Ad]]

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